


december ninth

by that_one_scorpio



Category: None - Fandom
Genre: Hospitalization, Substance Abuse, Suicide, Suicide Attempt, Underage substance abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-10
Updated: 2020-09-10
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:34:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26395723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/that_one_scorpio/pseuds/that_one_scorpio
Summary: It was a Monday night when I made one of the most stupid decisions of my life.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 1





	1. I

**Author's Note:**

> TRIGGER WARNING
> 
> hello friends,
> 
> this is a very personal story, which involves substance abuse (ie: pills), mental health issues, and two su*cide attempts. if you are triggered by any of these things, please don't read. 
> 
> as i mention in the first few paragraphs, i wrote this to get things off my chest. i just don't want to think about things anymore or confuse myself any longer, so i wrote out the events as accurately and truthfully as i could.
> 
> again, if this is triggering to anyone, i sincerely apologize. please don't read if you are sensitive to any of the tags i included or things i have mentioned.

It was a Monday night when I made one of the most stupid decisions of my life.

I’m telling this in a narrative form because I prefer to be all formal when I’m writing, so it helps me to be mentally distant from what actually happened. I’m also writing because no one in my life knows the real story, so if you read this: Congratulations, you’re special. 

I actually posted a really stupid Instagram story the morning after, saying that I had been stupid and spent the night in an ER, not thinking anything of it. But, of course, some parents and adults saw it and worriedly texted my parents asking if I was alright. 

What made the situation worse was the fact that I had never told either my parents about any of my social media accounts, simply because I wanted just one space to myself where I could be the “real” me and make friends on my own without worrying about parental expectations or getting judged. After that whole debacle (even my church’s youth pastor texted my dad), my parents basically banned me from using social media. 

However, I’m the type of person to always find loopholes and exceptions, so I’m still on Instagram and Twitter where I actually somewhat have a social life with some irl friends and wonderful online friends whom I love to death and really want to meet someday. 

Anyways, back to the story.

To provide some background: I have had less-than-average to horrible mental health for the past six years.   
I experienced some physical abuse and accidental mental/emotional abuse when I was ten to twelve years old.   
I was also exposed to all the bad sides of the Internet at a young age, which was my own fault because of curiosity, and I believe that my early exposure contributed to my mental state too.   
To add to that, my mother was also diagnosed with brain cancer in early 2018. She had a surgery to remove over 90% of the tumor, and she is currently recovering without any relapses. Still, the percentage of the tumor that is left affects her and affects our relationship in ways that I won’t go into.

Now: December, which was not a good month for me.


	2. II

Stress from school was piling up, I was fighting with my mom and crying almost every day, my grandma would be coming over from France soon, I had a horrible self-image and was considering developing an ED, and I think I was dealing with some issues from online friends as well.

So, the week before December 9, I half-attempted suicide. I don’t remember which day it was, exactly.

My mental health was bad that day, and I was feeling desperate for a “way out”, so I finally decided to act. I had a habit of staying up late to do homework and fool around on the Internet after everyone had gone to bed, so I knew that it wouldn’t be suspicious if I was by myself at 12 AM.

Finally, when I couldn’t hear anyone moving around, I stood up from my seat in the living room. After some searching, I found myself standing in the dark with a glass of water and a handful of pills that included three kinds of pain meds and anti-seizure medication too. It was about thirty pills in total. I can’t really remember the exact time duration anymore, but I swallowed them all over the course of either one or two hours.

I went to sleep feeling somewhat disappointed, since I didn’t feel anything. Even after I woke up the next day, I just felt really sleepy and cloudy-minded. After I took an early morning French class, I crashed on a couch for a couple hours and was fine but a little dizzy for the rest of the day.

Now, on December 9th, I wasn’t alone, since it was only 10 PM.

This time, I wasn’t cloudy-minded. I was suicidal, yes, but my mind was very clear. I clearly remember asking myself, “You know what? Thirty pills over one and a half hours didn’t work. What if I took fewer pills but over a shorter time period?” (I should take the time to mention that I can’t swallow multiple pills at once, I have to take them one at a time.)

That night, I remember feeling really impulsive but decisive, almost like my mind was making decisions for me instead of the other way around. I felt really light-hearted about the whole thing. I felt like I could flirt with death or dance on the edge of that cliff between life and utter nothingness with no consequence.

It would just be a sort of experiment, right?

Just like the one I had done last Thursday in the chemistry lab, right?

Wrong.

I went into the kitchen and took twelve ibuprofen pills from the cabinet where we kept over-the-counter medication. Everyone else in my family was either in their rooms or utterly absorbed in what they were doing, so no one noticed me coming in. I went back to my spot by the living room coffee table with a glass of water and swallowed all of the pills, one by one, over the course of fifteen minutes. Then, I went back to studying for my chemistry final that would happen in a couple days.

Fifteen minutes passed, nothing happened.

Twenty minutes passed, nothing happened.

Thirty minutes passed, nothing happened.

An hour passed. I started to feel light headed.

My laptop screen started to go blurry, so I turned the laptop off and rubbed my temples, squeezing my eyes shut with a yawn. I called out that I was going to bed early, since I was tired from studying the whole day. My family responded by wishing me a good night.

Suddenly, I suddenly felt sick to my stomach and rushed to the toilet to throw up my dinner. I heard my mom yelling to ask if I was okay, but I said it was probably just the stress about finals week. I brushed my teeth and tumbled into bed, hoping to close my eyes and drift off to sleep like last time. But, after a little while, my parents came into my room and sat by my bed to pray for me, just like they used to whenever I got sick as a little kid.

As they were praying, my mind started to wander, and I thought about what I would study the next day. But after a few minutes, I noticed that I was subconsciously breathing faster than before. I tried to slow down my breathing, but it just got faster and faster.

Then, my heart started to pound as I realized: _I couldn’t breathe._


	3. III

I held my breath for a couple seconds, clutching at my blankets before I touched my mother’s arm. 

Between pauses, I said “Mom, I can’t breathe.”

“What?”

“I can’t breathe.”

She hurriedly helped me to sit up in bed as I bent over, desperately trying to get oxygen in my lungs. My parents were shocked and kept asking me if I was okay until my dad offered to take me to the ER.

I felt horrible, and somehow dimly felt like I was asking for attention because I had told them that I couldn’t breathe. My mother bundled me up in two coats because it was cold outside, and my dad helped me out the door as I staggered and gripped his arms for support.

Just before I reached our front gate, I found that I could breathe a little better. I sucked in deep breaths of sharp, cold air and stared up at the dark sky where tiny stars shone unusually bright. 

I told my dad I wanted to go back to bed, and he helped me back inside. 

But then the whole thing repeated again, and this time, it was worse.

I was coughing in between tiny gasps, hacking and hoping for air to fill my lungs. I finally agreed to go to the ER and stumbled outside to the car alone while my dad grabbed his ID. I reclined the passenger’s seat and looked up at the car’s ceiling while literally begging God: “I don’t want to die, please don’t let me die, I’m so sorry-”

Now that I look back, it was at that very moment where I could have died. Everything could have ended right there, with me choking on my own saliva in the passenger’s seat of my dad’s car.

By now, it was 1 AM.

We were speeding off towards the nearest hospital when I suddenly asked to pull over since I was feeling sick. My dad handed me a plastic bag as we slowed down, but as the bile rose up in my throat, I realized there was a hole in it. I simply opened the door and threw up, but after the first few seconds, I realized something was wrong. It tasted  _ vile, _ absolutely toxic in my mouth, and at the same time I couldn’t still breathe.

So there I was, hanging out the door of my Dad’s Honda, crying, choking, and wishing that I would black out because the pain in my lungs was too much. After I threw up, I slammed the door and told him to keep going.

When we got to the ER, only a couple of people were there. My dad and I gave the receptionist some information, I held out my wrist for a bracelet, and then I sat in a chair for what seemed like an eternity while still clutching the plastic bag to my chest. As soon they called my name, I went into a designated room and sat down while a male nurse started to ask me questions. He called me “honey” and was nice to me, and I felt the tiniest bit better, even though I knew he was just following standard patient interaction procedures.

While I was answering his questions, my ears started to ring and I shut my eyes as I felt like throwing up again. 

“I’m really sorry,” I said, “But I feel like I’m going to throw up. Do you guys have a bag?”

He silently handed me a green bag and patted me gently on the back as I threw up again. My mouth tasted like a chemical waste plant at this point, and I started to cough again as I struggled to breathe. Tears squeezed out of my eyes from the pain, and I knew that I looked like a wreck.

The nurse did a quick physical as I coughed every so often, then sent me to a room to rest and wait for more tests while my dad sat with me. I shut the curtains, changed into a warm hospital robe, and laid on the bed under a flimsy cotton blanket.

I had mentally shut down at that point, and I didn’t know what to feel. I wasn’t sad or scared or angry, just numb and exhausted. 

When the same nurse from before came in to check some other vitals, he asked what had happened, and if I had any heart problems. I was a little confused, but then I realized that it looked like I had heart problems because of the high heart rate, erratic breathing, and vomiting. In a quiet voice, I awkwardly explained that I had swallowed pills a few hours before.

“Was it just some medication that you forgot the dosage of?”

I shook my head.

“Was it on purpose?” He asked. I nodded and looked down at my hands, digging my nails into my palms and feeling the plastic orange wristband press sharply into my skin. 

He sighed softly, telling me that I would have to speak to the psychiatrist on duty. The nurse left as my heart was starting to pound again. My dad had left the room to let me change, but he re-entered and asked me what was going on. I replied that they needed to take some blood, do some other tests, and have me speak to a psychiatrist. He seemed especially concerned about the last part, but I was too nervous to tell my dad the truth. He silently sat down by the hospital bed, placing his hand gently on my knee and looking at his phone to pass the time.

When the psychiatrist arrived, she asked me a couple general questions, then asked if I wanted my dad in the room for the next part. It felt horrible, but I asked if it was alright if he could leave. He shut the door behind him on the way out, and my heart hurt as I watched him settle down outside and look at his phone again. The psychiatrist shut the curtains and began asking me more questions. It was so weird having to express the state of my mental health to an actual person, but it was freeing at the same time. 

Still, I knew I had to be careful. The conversation went on as she wrote some things on her clipboard, and then, at one point, she looked up at me through her glasses with a serious, but kind expression.

“Well, I’ll have to talk to my superior, but there’s two options for you at this point, which I’ll tell your dad about, too. You can either have outpatient care, or we’ll have you spend some time in a facility.”

My heart stopped. 

“I-I’m not sure if I want to spend the night in a facility-”

“Oh, I know, sweetheart. I’ll discuss your situation with my boss before we do anything else, okay?”

I nodded, feeling apprehensive about the whole thing. I had a chemistry final in two days and my grandma would have to get picked up from the airport in just twelve hours. How would I ever be able to face my unknowing family and just casually tell them, “Oh yeah, I tried to impulsively commit suicide, see you in a couple days!” 

She told me that I needed to tell my dad what happened, otherwise, they wouldn’t be able to send me anywhere or recommend any outpatient treatments. I was silent for a long while after that, but I mumbled, “Okay.”

The psychiatrist patted me kindly on the back and left. Through the curtains, I saw her talking to my dad and motioning to my room. At this point, it was 2 AM, and I felt absolutely horrible for making my father go through all this. I mentally prepared myself as he stepped in and shut the door.

“So, what happened?” He said, sitting in the chair by the bed. 

I took a deep breath and said, for what seemed to be the fifth time, “I swallowed twelve pills.”

There was a long pause. I played with a loose thread in the blanket, my mind feeling absolutely blank. I was so tired. I wanted to sleep. 

“Why?” He asked, his voice quiet and tight with tension. I stayed quiet, knowing that I would have to lie again.

“Was it the stress? Are Mom and I doing anything to you?”

“No, no, no!” I burst out, “It’s not really you guys at all. I’m just...stressed.”

Again, similar questions came, but I answered in vague, general ways. That whole night was full of questions, from other people and from myself. I knew I couldn’t answer all of them. I remember that one of the worst parts of the night (other than almost dying, puking my lungs out, and methodically explaining my depression to a stranger) was hearing my dad call my mom and explain what had happened. 

On that hospital bed, I just sat in shame, numb, and tired for the whole night. I didn’t feel anything, and I didn’t want to feel anything anymore. 

I knew that no one would be able to truly understand this one thing:  _ I impulsively swallowed twelve pills on December 9th because I thought I could play around with my life. _

**Author's Note:**

> to anyone who is considering ending it all, don’t do it.
> 
> it is not worth seeing your father sit in silence after his child tells him that they have swallowed enough pills to poison their blood.  
> it is not worth having your mother clutch on to you for dear life after you come home and cry on your next while you stand there, numb inside, whispering “i’m sorry” and forcing your arms to mechanically wrap around one of the people that brought you into this world.  
> it is not worth feeling disgusted every time you look into the mirror and thinking “you pathetic human being. you couldn’t even do it right.”
> 
> no. 
> 
> there are things to live for in this world. there are people out there who really love you. you find ways to love yourself again.
> 
> don’t let your depression, your anxiety, your OCD, your panic attacks, your mental health, or just your current situation take over you.
> 
> hold on to hope.
> 
> life gets better. it always does.


End file.
